After five days in North Carolina we have recovered all of the 80 stations. The stations have been recording for one month along two profiles. Now we are downloading the data at the instrument center at the East Carolina University in Greenville. The last step is getting the equipment ready for shipping back to PASSCAL in New Mexico.Beatrice (Bix), Dan and Ana working onsite at the first station recovered. Bix and Ana are checking the parameters of the Reftek with the CLIE, and Dan is saving the GPS waypoint of the recovery site. Yanjun working on one of the stations recovered on the north line. He is performing a check with the CLIE to see the number of events recorded, the data stored on the disks and stopping the acquisition. He also checks all 3 channels on the L28 sensor. Once the acquisition has been stopped, the sensor can be pulled and the station is taken back to the instrument center.A few of the Refteks at the instrument center. The upward cap indicates that the data have been downloaded. Yanjun labeling Reftek flash cards that contain recordings from the past month. Flash cards labeled with Reftek serial numbers. This is the product of our hard labor!

We experienced wonderful weather during the past week working in North Carolina. The scenic countryside is filled with tobacco fields, cotton fields, and other crops. One lucky recovery team started the first day on Kitty Hawk Beach demobilizing site 101. Beach near the easternmost station on the north line of the onshore profiles

One of the many cotton fields in the eastern North Carolina coastal plain

Dopplergrams from the NASA’s space telescope IRIS (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) revealing detailed evidence of “twist” between the sun’s surface and outer atmosphere. These phenomena may play a role in driving the temperature difference between the sun’s surface (~6000 K) and the sun’s outer atmosphere (millions of degrees). The reason for this enormous temperature gradient is not fully understood (a puzzle known as the “coronal heating problem”). Image: De Pontieu et al., Science 2014

By Galileo’s careful hand, sunspot details are exquisite,

Through eye of forehead, eye of mind beholds what body can not visit.

If only he could see the sights now rendered from Earth’s outer space,